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A review by billywraithcyrus
The Undertaking of Lily Chen by Danica Novgorodoff
3.0
The redeeming three-star review is based solely on the art in this book. I thought it was really stunning as I perpetually mesmerized that anybody can actually make watercolors do what they want them to do.
That said, I thought the story was bland. As others have said on here, there was next to no character depth thought this 430-page story. And as much as I liked the art, it was no substitute for actual storytelling. And the moment when Deshi and Lily have sex by the campfire was more disturbing than touching (way more disturbing). Like, that whole thing started because he snuck up on her to strangle her. What the fuck.
Finally, I don't really know why this took place in China. Yes, it seems that the creator of this graphic novel read an article in Forbes about a phenomenon of using dead women's bodies as corpse brides in China, but... without having any clear connection herself to cultures in China, I'm left wondering why this was set in China. The imagination exists with no boundary, so wouldn't it have been more creative to take this element and place it in a created fantasy world where this is a practice and where you can better build that world rather than forcing it into a region of China where Novgorodoff makes a pretty preventable mistake of trying to guess what the culture is like - a culture that, it's worth noting, the Novgorodoff has no connection to.
That said, I thought the story was bland. As others have said on here, there was next to no character depth thought this 430-page story. And as much as I liked the art, it was no substitute for actual storytelling. And the moment when Deshi and Lily have sex by the campfire was more disturbing than touching (way more disturbing). Like, that whole thing started because he snuck up on her to strangle her. What the fuck.
Finally, I don't really know why this took place in China. Yes, it seems that the creator of this graphic novel read an article in Forbes about a phenomenon of using dead women's bodies as corpse brides in China, but... without having any clear connection herself to cultures in China, I'm left wondering why this was set in China. The imagination exists with no boundary, so wouldn't it have been more creative to take this element and place it in a created fantasy world where this is a practice and where you can better build that world rather than forcing it into a region of China where Novgorodoff makes a pretty preventable mistake of trying to guess what the culture is like - a culture that, it's worth noting, the Novgorodoff has no connection to.